Memory Beta talk:Image use policy
So let me get this straight - all of the book covers, video game covers, etc. should be under the "fair use" template and not the "paramount" template? Right now, the paramount template is on everything - is that also acceptable or is that inappropriate? I would have thought that paramount still ultimately owns the rights on anything star trek related so that should be acceptable as well. Recently I have been spending time adding descriptions to whole groups of images such as the novel covers - should I go back and change all the covers, etc. to the fair use template? What about adding templates to pages that don't already have them? --Jdvelasc 19:34, 13 May 2007 (UTC) ::actually, the "rights" to the material is not so cut and dried. if Ballantine Books publishes a Star Trek book, they are only allowed to do so under license from Paramount, since Paramount owns Star Trek.. however, the book is not 'owned' by Paramount. Paramount has no right to reproduce a publication of Ballantine Books -- so they don't technically have any rights in the matter except to tell Ballantine when to stop publishing things with Star Trek's name, and when to stop contracting out new material. Paramount is currently contracted to create new publications with Pocket Books, so Ballantine isn't allowed to create new Trek material.. but neither can Paramount turn around and reproduce anything that Ballantine, Gold Key, Bantam, etc did in the past -- actually Ballantine and the Gold Key material are frequently repackaged, on the grounds that they not create new material. -- Captain MKB 02:55, 14 May 2007 (UTC) :::Okay, so if I understand you, we should not be putting the "imageparamount" template on novels, game covers, etc. Hopefully the "fair use" template will suffice. I am going to start doing this and this will require a huge number of page changes so somebody please tell me if this is wrong or unnecessary. --Jdvelasc 03:13, 14 May 2007 (UTC) Supplemental images I can't see anything about supplemental images here; do we have another policy page that details them? If not I think we could use some guidelines on the hows and whys of supplementals; we have several recurring issues that come up on supplemental image votes that could be simplified by having an established set of rules for these sort of images. I'm thinking of things like: *We should only use a supplemental image when no comparable official image is available. Even if the official image is in theory slightly inferior I believe it is preferable to use that than making up our own. *We should always take account of how and where the image is going to be used. If for instance we already have an image of a minor character than we more than likely won’t require a second image to adequately illustrate their article. *Images created by the creators of licensed publications should take precedence to images created by our users in general, as they obviously know what was in their minds eye far better than we do. *We should clarify exactly what we consider acceptable. **We've set a precedent in allowing fantasy casting, so that is clearly ok now, but I think we need to specify that such images should be edited as best as possible to make them look Star Trek''y; we had an issue before where a Battlestar Galactica image was used for the actress and the Battlestar Galactica colouration was very evident in the final image, we should try and avoid that. **That sort of specificity might also extent to the media, do we only allow photomanipulations and basic graphics? Or do we permit the use of drawings and paintings? If so do we have an expectation of the quality of that drawing? --8of5 17:37, September 13, 2010 (UTC) :I'm not aware of policy, I go by rule of thumb and precedent. For example, by precedent there is established our big thumbnailed rank insignia system (probably before I even joined the wiki), so I've been considering such graphics 'approved' as long as they do not violate the original style of the pre-existing images or the factual nature of canon/licensed works. Now that multiple people have tried their hands at similar subject matter, I've suggested recently that comparison by the community should resolve them :for example, the existing insignia sets use rich saturated shades of color as seen in canon and decided by the original artist, Kuro, with later artists contributing in a like manner, someone is suggesting we change that for a very subjective reason, and I want them to discuss that with more people than just I as it is a major change and possibly not in fitting with the precedent Kuro set of using very simplified illustrative insignia. :As to photomanips, perhaps a bullet list of guidelines similar to our deletion criteria. We should approve the picture if it accurately depicts a licensed subject, and disapprove based on inaccuracy? is it fan fiction? do we want to make style rules? If all of our supplemental images are based on photomanipulation of screencaps, should we disallow original line drawings that don't fit that style? I'm just asking exploratory questions, I don't have a solid opinio on this as of yet. -- Captain MKB 17:46, September 13, 2010 (UTC) ::OK, I have a solid opinion about something. Whats the deal with the approved image at Gerda Asmund? Could we codify a way to get approved images rated on a scale of quality? -- Captain MKB 18:05, September 13, 2010 (UTC) I think it might be difficult to rule out line drawings all together. Christopher L. Bennett's for instance are excellent and very useful illustrations. I think perhaps encouraging photomanips as our preferred media might be wise though. As to your other points, perhaps it might be worth introducing a set of firm criteria and a corresponding set of discussion headings for each image. So instead of the current general "Discussion" and "Votes" headings, we might have "Rationale", "Quality" and "Votes" to better focus the discussion to make sure we address both whether we need the image, and if the image is good enough? --8of5 18:27, September 13, 2010 (UTC) :Makes sense to me. One landmine - photomanipulation of screencaps as a matter of course is easy, as the source is copyright Paramount and the work is done by the photoshopper. However, we should generally discourage drastically altering licensed publication artwork, as it could intrude into the respect for the original artist. For example, the Starfleet Intelligence logo, I just added the word 'Intelligence' to make it clear what it was for -- and the Presidential Shuttle just has a new symbol paint job. But if we have people drawing new faces on drawings done by John Byrne -- well, that doesn't seem respectful to John Byrne, does it? - Captain MKB 18:32, September 13, 2010 (UTC) Seems reasonable, although one could argue we're choosing to respect comic and book artists only to ignore the integrity of images coming from the artists who photographed and rendered our screen images. But I know what you mean so broadly agree. Where do we draw the line though? If changing logos is ok, is taking off annotations on technical diagrams? Or isolating characters and ships from a busy background? I think a good rule of thumb is to suggest keeping edits to an absolute minimum, if an images works with a few annotations and a slightly messy background, then we probably shouldn't take them out. --8of5 18:46, September 13, 2010 (UTC) :This is where we get into the area of "skill" -- it doesn't take a lot of skill to use a program to put two space scenes into one image and make it looks smooth and excellent -- but it would take a lot of skill to make a drawing look as good as John Byrne and his colorist would without seeing seams and imperfections. :*We do the episode directors respectful credit by keeping their images looking good, even in photoshops... :*We do the print artists respectful credit by keeping their images looking good, by not altering them :) :When we are presenting licensed images, I agree - it does the most credit to the source if they are minimally altered. I'd prefer that word balloons and technical diagrams stay, just to keep the image in context to its source. Also, it is very difficult for a novice to correctly remove a word balloon from a drawing without causing it to look like, how can I put this, complete shit. -- Captain MKB 18:54, September 13, 2010 (UTC) I think your point about quality is important. Word balloons and technical diagrams that are removed cleanly shouldn't be a problem. I think the guiding principles should be clarity and quality. A seamlessly photoshopped picture - one that you can't tell is photoshopped without already knowing - is good. A poorly photoshopped one is bad. So is a photoshop that makes what's being illustrated less clear. --Archimedean 19:19, September 13, 2010 (UTC) :Yes, there is also my point about context. Leaving in parts of word balloons or backgrounds isn't necessarily a bad thing. I don't think there is cause to remove them in many cases as they maintain the honest provenance of the image -- you can tell by looking at it that it is from a comic or picture book and that we haven't taken steps to tinker with the format of the information. -- Captain MKB 19:36, September 13, 2010 (UTC) Context is part of what I meant by "clarity." If the source of the image is meaningful, or if the removed text/diagrams were helpful in conveying what the image is supposed to illustrate, then they shouldn't be removed. Does it usually matter where an image is from (except for citation purposes)? If an image is uploaded to show what Starbase 100 looks like, are dialogue boxes in the image helpful to that? Sometimes they might be. I think that they should be kept then, and removed otherwise, so long as they can be removed cleanly. Unless, of course, their presence makes no difference at all. Then either keeping them or removing them would be fine. --Archimedean 19:43, September 13, 2010 (UTC) :I'd be against us starting a pattern of editing out details like that. It's introducing additional complexity to a system that works fine already. -- Captain MKB 19:53, September 13, 2010 (UTC) I don't think that much complexity is involved. If an uploader wanted to edit out unnecessary text boxes, etc., and could remove them neatly, that would be fine. Otherwise, no one needs to do anything. --Archimedean 20:02, September 13, 2010 (UTC) :No, that's not true. If an uploader was that intent on editing out a portion of a licensed image, I should feel they'd have to run it through the approval process to see if their edits make sense to other users. If they crop and upload the image as-is, the image can usually be used without discussion if properly cited and attributed. -- Captain MKB 20:04, September 13, 2010 (UTC) I do think there are a limited number of times when neatening edits are good, for instance if we take a logo from the ''Star Trek Encyclopedia it will often have text, which we might be cropping into mid-word or mid-letter, that will often look better if we edit the text out to just make it a plain white background. Same sort of thing sometimes in taking out arrows from annotations which might be cropped out of the image. But both of those examples are for images which are already in someway isolated from context. If we take a screencap, comic or cover scan, then the editing takes out an integral part of the image, and I think that is the step too far. Especially when you can do a lot for the presentation of an image simply by cropping it appropriately. --8of5 20:11, September 13, 2010 (UTC) :For example, our UFP logos are used as little thumbnails in tables so they are simplified and isolated to a white background so they can be used as illustrations. But an image of a comic character with a bit of word balloon in the corner doesn't look bad with that there and there isn't any need to introduce complexity by photoshopping the character off of the comic page. -- Captain MKB 20:16, September 13, 2010 (UTC) I was thinking of something like Bashir Zero Sum.jpg, which might be improved by removing the letters. --Archimedean 23:14, September 13, 2010 (UTC) :As I said above, that is exactly the case where no such effortwould be necessary -- it would create a large layer of complexity for what, until now, has been a fairly simple procedure here. -- Captain MKB 00:26, September 14, 2010 (UTC)